


Death

by naaz



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Death, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 05:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11051907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naaz/pseuds/naaz
Summary: The first death of a hand maiden that Padmé witnessed.





	Death

She remembers the first.

Sticky blood between her fingers as she pressed down hard on an unresponsive chest. The dull crack, and break of bone under her palms as chest gave way and she tried to force life back into a body that couldn’t even hang on until medical droids arrived on site. 

There’d been less screaming, less crying than she’d expected. It wasn’t like a war zone. It was a deep almost contemplative silence as she stared across the wreckage. 

It takes _too long_ for her to realize that the silence is shock. There’s fire crackling and distant clamoring and her own, uneasy breathing as she hovers over the broken body of a girl who had been like a sister to her. All of this for that one moment. They were raised with her, like sisters, like her own sister who’s somewhere now, in the palace oblivious to the hell that’s transpiring below.

Her heart aches in her chest and she feels as though it’s going to burst from where it rests in her rib cage and why isn't she crying? She’s almost as mad at that as she is the reality settling over her.

They scoop her up. They tend to Padmé’s wounds and they drape sheet over the fallen handmaiden.

She’d made it longer than some before death she’d felt death, seen it, known it so intimately she might call it fer first lover.

She remembers the first.

Heavy like her eyelids, like the purpling bruises and the lack of sleep underneath.

To everything there is a purpose, the officiant had said, as she stood with her hands clasped together in her lap. He’d gone on, droning endlessly and she wonders if he views this as _his moment_ to push his own narrative, as she stands with the collar of a queen over designed gown growing tighter and tighter around her pale neck.

She’d had fittings for this. 

People had preened over her appearance and been worried what the court would think. They had designed a mourning gown all her own when the other had been deemed ill-fitting the occasion. 

All the while she stood as an empty vessel. She is an _empty_ vessel, a convenient place for people to project their own emotions as she watches ceremonial proceedings and wishes she could go too. Not go to death, but to the soft, ethereal place that she must believe her friend now rests along side all of Naboo’s heroes.

And when she’s alone, it strikes her. More than just being the queen she has to be the sort of woman who carries every death in her honor to greater glory. That she must make herself worth dying for.


End file.
